


doubletalk gets through

by csoru, nescienx



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: M/M, Obedience, Praise Kink, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 07:19:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5082781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/csoru/pseuds/csoru, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nescienx/pseuds/nescienx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Illya is always at his most appealing when pushed. His is a grace best seen in extremis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	doubletalk gets through

**Author's Note:**

> Right, so, the fault for this lies wholly with the twitter spy hell hivemind. Naming and shaming Robin, Mae and Renne in particular. [Mae](http://buckybuns.tumblr.com) is also responsible for the amazing, amazing art; it has been a genuine honour and pleasure to collaborate with her on this, and her input and enthusiasm were invaluable.

The first time it happens, it catches Napoleon completely off guard. He goes very still, mind short-circuiting like a faulty gramophone getting stuck on a record and repeating the same discordant note.

The first time it happens, it happens like this: they are getting shot at, as usual when an operation goes wrong, which is most of the time. Americans, this time. It’s refreshing, even if Americans determined to kill him is not in itself a new or noteworthy event in Napoleon’s life, but this time he has the abstract knowledge of being on the side of moral superiority. Probably. He and Illya are getting shot at, standing on opposite ends of the control room soaking in red emergency lights, and Napoleon sees the man with the knife before Illya can register the movement at his back.

‘Get down,’ Napoleon yells over the cacophony of gunfire and other people yelling, distractedly enough, in English, ‘ _now_.’

Even across the room he can see Illya’s eyes go wide and then, as if someone cut the invisible strings keeping him up and moving, Illya folds to his knees.

The knife slashes at empty air where Illya’s ribs were a quarter of a second before. Napoleon stares. The moment can’t last more than another quarter of a second, less time than it takes for one blink of the emergency light. Illya twists, kicks out and catches his attacker in the shin; the bone must snap, because the man screams.

Napoleon stops paying attention and refocusses on the more immediate goal of trying not to die.

…

There is a part of his mind, though, a very conscious part he can’t simply switch off — not that he tries — that keeps replaying the sight across the insides of his eyelids: Illya dropping down, the dance of red lights across his frozen expression, long limbs arranging themselves as Napoleon directed. Unquestioning. Surprised, but strangely eager. Interesting.

Napoleon lets the thoughts linger and take any shape they wish. On any given day, he doesn’t find his work boring. On the days that he does, it is usually enough to invest in expensive wine, roll up his sleeves, go someplace potentially lethal and see how things unfold. 

He is curious, now, to see how things could unfold. There is a myriad scenarios he can easily envision, most of them ending with Illya breaking his fingers. The very real threat of miscalculation and violence is its own incentive to try, and to push. Illya is always at his most appealing when pushed. His is a grace best seen in extremis.

…

Venice in August is crowded with tourists, the Grand Canal as busy as a motorway at high noon. The fourth floor hotel suite has enough privacy that even with the balcony doors thrown wide open, gauze curtains swaying in the breeze, Napoleon does not mind. At night, it’s worth it. Lights below and across the canal, enviable room service, the staff ever so eager to please — and, of course, a poker game with the highest stakes in the city.

Being not quite irreplaceable but good enough to make losing him a pain any employer’s ass comes with its privileges. Napoleon ignored the list of hotels Waverly recommended for this mission, and doesn’t regret the decision now.

Judging by Illya’s narrowed eyes when he walks into the suite, he, on the other hand, immediately regrets his own choice of hotel.

Napoleon spreads his hands. The tails of his dress shirt fall across his hips. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he says. ‘Mi casa, and so on.’

There is a full bottle of Macallan on the small table. Two glasses. Illya scowls at the whisky, at the glasses, and finally at Napoleon. ‘Does Waverly know he pays for this?’

‘Not yet,’ Napoleon says, ‘and it’s the British government, really. I’m guessing they have some contributions from the US and USSR, too. They want the job done, they might as well provide us with the tools necessary to do it well.’

‘This is not necessary to do the job well.’ For all his scowling, Illya accepts the offered glass. He takes a sip, and they’re standing close enough now that Napoleon can hear the appreciative noise Illya makes at the back of his throat as if he murmured it right in Napoleon’s ear. Someone must have taught him how to recognise alcohol of quality. ‘You have the package?’

Before setting off for Venice, they had agreed only one of them should be smuggling more than a handgun. After drawing lots, and to Illya’s displeasure, Napoleon found himself in possession of a small arsenal. (He is still getting used to this degree of preparation. Working alone, he’d rely on his improvisational skills; they had never steered him wrong.)

‘I have the package. It’s not exactly rocket science to get this stuff across a few borders on this side of the Iron Curtain. Unless you have a noticeable Russian accent, I suppose, so I understand if you consider it an accomplishment.’

Illya rolls his eyes. He doesn’t move away, apparently content with the hair’s breadth of distance between them. Next to his turtleneck, jacket, shoulder holster, every inch of him speaking to cold professional expediency — next to it all, barefoot and without a tie, Napoleon feels positively debauched. It’s a good feeling.

‘Don’t worry, peril. I’ll bring you your guns,’ he says. Then, trying the cross between urgent and commanding that got him unexpected results before, he adds: ‘Sit.’

For a moment, he is certain Illya will sit down right there on the floor — his knees buckle, slightly, as if on automatic. He catches himself, straightens, takes a step towards Napoleon. They are close enough, now, that Napoleon has to look up to maintain eye contact. When he wants to, Illya is very good at looming.

‘What are you doing?’ he asks. There is something of a purebred doberman in him like this: offhandedly threatening, not yet ready to attack but telegraphing a promise of violence. It’s been two weeks since Napoleon first saw him go down to his knees so fast the instinct must have been beaten into him. It gives him a singular thrill to know that Illya remembers it, too.

There is not a force on earth that could make Napoleon back down now. He says, ‘I’m asking you to take a seat while I bring you the guns you presumably came here for.’

‘Not asking. Telling.’

‘There’s a difference?’

‘Yes,’ says Illya, enunciating slowly. He’s holding the glass between himself and Napoleon. The other hand clenches into a fist at his side. ‘Don’t give me orders, cowboy. I do not work for you.’

Napoleon takes a measured step, then another, trying to keep the pleased smirk off his face. He’s already a little high from the tension, palpable in the air between them, as if charged with real electricity. He wants to put his fingers on the pulse point at the side of Illya’s neck and see if he’ll get shocked, if there will be sparks. He walks a slow half circle until he’s at Illya’s back. Illya does not turn. Maybe he’s waiting to be told that he can.

With a very remote part of his conscious mind, Napoleon wonders how long it must have taken whoever trained this into the boy Illya had been. Mostly, he wants to laugh out loud. Either this is easier than he thought it would be, or he read that one split-second moment of unthinking obedience so well he might have been handed the access codes to the twisting maze of conflicting impulses that is Illya Kuryakin on a silver platter.

‘You work for me as much as I work for you, I’d say. But this is hardly a professional setting, is it?’

‘You should know. You invited me. Is it?’

Napoleon grins. ‘You invited yourself,’ he says. ‘I’m not pouring the whisky down your throat by force, either.’

Illya swallows. In the otherwise quiet room high up enough that the noise from downstairs dissipates somewhere below the balcony, the sound seems as loud as a gunshot. Perhaps Illya has memories that would go with this particular collection of words. Whisky, down, throat, force. From what Napoleon has heard about the training regimen the KGB has developed for their young recruits, he wouldn’t be surprised. He only wonders how much of a fight Illya put up before he learned to obey, or if it was a personality quirk waiting to be exploited.

He lifts one hand and places it between Illya’s shoulder blades, presses down firmly enough for Illya to feel it through the jacket, not firmly enough to imply that he would like Illya to move.

‘What’s really fascinating here,’ he says, soft worn leather warm under his palm, ‘is that right now I think you’d let me.’

And then he wraps his fingers around the back of Illya’s neck and pushes him roughly down to his knees.

Illya — folds, there is no other word for it. He drops down to the floor with a loud, hitching exhale. He doesn’t spill the whisky. After a moment, when he has an excellent opportunity to dig his elbow into the nerve cluster next to Napoleon’s knee but doesn’t, Napoleon lets his grip on Illya’s neck go slack. From the back, he has no way to tell if Illya is disappointed. He doesn’t protest, though. He is not held down, not tied down — and isn’t that an idea, a very good idea, an art masterpiece waiting to happen.

Perhaps he is as morbidly curious to see where this could go as Napoleon is. They did try to one-up each other from the moment they met.

Napoleon cards his fingers through Illya’s hair, ridiculously pleased with the mess he leaves.

‘Right now, I would. Let you,’ says Illya, leaning back until Napoleon can see his eyes drifting half-shut, leaning into his hand like a touch-starved puppy.

It’s that thought that makes Napoleon bend down and murmur, ‘Good boy.’

Illya bites down on a strangled sound that might, or might not be, a moan.

‘Put the glass down,’ says Napoleon. Illya obeys, head bowed, letting Napoleon pull his jacket off his shoulders. Doesn’t lift his head when Napoleon moves to hang the jacket over the nearest chair. Only his uneven breathing when Napoleon comes back and says, again, ‘Good,’ is any indication that he is there at all, hasn’t forced himself to be somewhere else like someone beaten one time too many might. That’s encouraging.

What’s more encouraging is the way Illya tracks him across the room as Napoleon moves to stand in front of him. He lifts his eyes to Napoleon’s face and in a brief flash of half-suffocating, half-terrifying clarity Napoleon knows that if he told him to, if he pitched his voice as low and authoritative as seems to get under Illya’s skin and to the marrow, Illya would go down on him without even breaking eye-contact. The realisation comes with a kind of rush of adrenaline and sheer, singleminded purpose Napoleon hasn’t felt since he broke into the Bank of England’s gold vault.

He doesn’t say the words. It’s enough to know that the possibility exists, to know that they are both achingly, painfully aware of it.

Instead, Napoleon drops to a crouch. With fastidious slowness he starts unbuckling Illya’s shoulder holster, knuckles brushing over the soft fabric of Illya’s shirt. Illya hasn’t even looked at the whisky glass since Napoleon told him to put it down. He only has eyes for Napoleon, flushed, hair still sticking up, lids at half-mast. He can’t be drunk, after a quarter glass of whisky. It is not the alcohol. He forces his gaze to follow Napoleon’s hands as he places the gun a short distance away, within easy reach.

As if he needs a weapon to be dangerous.

As if Napoleon would find him half as attractive if he did.

Napoleon feels as if he were a little drunk, too. He never thought — oh, no, he thought, at great length, on the occasional night he spent alone with his right hand for company. But he thought in terms of clear boundaries and Illya’s temper and control and stiff-backed pride. Here, now, Illya leans into his every touch, breath catching at Napoleon’s every approving word. It’s better than getting drunk on expensive whisky. It is almost better than the thrill of stealing.

Napoleon is at first only vaguely aware that they are both hard, but once he starts thinking about it he can’t stop. There is probably an untranslateable French phrase to describe this particular mix of blind lust, danger, and blind lust for danger.

A gentle wind falls into the room through the open balcony, making Illya breathe in sharply. Colder air on overheated skin, and they are still almost fully clothed. Napoleon moves so he’s at Illya’s back again, kneeling this time, leaning into and against him.

‘Stay still, peril. Don’t move,’ he orders, and waits for the answering nod of assent before he fists one hand in Illya’s hair, tugging his head back and resting his chin on Illya’s shoulder, mouth pressed to the warm point where his jaw meets his ear, evening stubble scratchy against Napoleon’s lower lip. With his other hand, he starts undoing Illya’s belt.

It’s a shame he can’t see the two of them reflected in the balcony door. Next time, he wants Illya in front of a full-length mirror, naked in morning light but for bruises and clean sweat, with the sounds of tourists across the canal. Now, Napoleon settles for the next best thing.

‘Look at you. You’re like art, you’re like Caravaggio in this light,’ he murmurs, breath ghosting over Illya’s ear and making him swallow convulsively but remain motionless, just like Napoleon told him to. ‘If anyone could see you like this, so good, easy, so tame, and just because I asked. Your handlers. Did they ever ask?’

Illya jerks in his hold, an aborted twitch of his hips, before he gets himself under control again. It could be that it’s the moment Napoleon chooses to slip his hand under the waistband of his trousers, that having Napoleon’s fingers wrapped around him is good enough for that iron grip he has on himself to slip. More likely, it’s the words. Napoleon knows he is good in bed, but better with words. Given enough time, he wonders if he could talk Illya into losing control completely.

‘Did you always like orders?’ he says, lower, hand working steadily. ‘Or did they have to teach you to like it? Did they teach you to get off on it? ‘Cause I don’t think so. I think you always liked it. More than you should.’

‘You think,’ says Illya, barely more than an exhale of breath, ‘too much.’

‘No talking, peril.’

Illya laughs, but the laugh turns into something far more appropriate — and appreciative — when Napoleon twists his hand on an upstroke. He must be feeling Napoleon’s own erection digging into his thigh. Napoleon barely pays it any heed.

‘Next time I can tie you down and gag you.’ He gives Illya’s hair one final tug before moving his hand to Illya’s throat. It’s barely any pressure, barely a touch, but it is enough for Illya to shudder, whole body going rigid. ‘I can tie you down and you’ll take it, am I right?’ He’s close, tense and almost humming with it, so Napoleon covers Illya’s mouth with his hand and goes for it hard and fast. ‘Just to hear me say how good you are.’

Illya comes with a long moan, spine arched taut and hands fisted so tight the bones must be creaking. 

Then just as abruptly he sags against Napoleon, breathing hot and steady over the palm still pressed to his mouth. Belatedly, Napoleon remembers to let him go. He’s surprised at how little he cares about getting off. It could nearly be enough to have Illya leaning his full weight against him, spent, the release of a constant undercurrent of tension Napoleon is so used to seeing he only registers it for its absence.

Illya, however, has other ideas. With seamless grace he lets the illusory veneer of submission fall apart, twists until they are face to face again. He pushes Napoleon down onto his back, one eyebrow twitching when Napoleon grunts as his head connects with the floor. The sudden shift in the dynamic, diverging from the script Napoleon had expected to play out — it’s distracting, and it is distracting enough that he doesn’t even put up a token protest. Illya undoes his trousers with alarming deftness, nudging Napoleon’s thighs apart so he can settle comfortably between them. There is no time, or place, for nudity; he takes both of Napoleon’s hips in a bruisingly hard grip, pinning them to the floor and precluding any unexpected movements on Napoleon’s part, and gets to work.

With a strangled noise, Napoleon throws one arm over his eyes. He’s too taken aback to speak, so he does not speak at all. It would be worrying, the ease with which Illya took charge — or just established who was in charge all along, an even more worrying thought — if only it wasn’t so good. Illya is good. Good, and apparently loving every second of giving head, his evident pleasure travelling across Napoleon’s nerve endings to pool in the pit of his stomach. It is such a good thought to savour later: who taught Illya to suck cock, and where did he learn to perform like this, fast and ruthlessly competent? So Napoleon doesn’t speak, breathing loudly, the only other noise in the suite save for the indecent, wet sounds that will keep Napoleon company on many a lonely night.

He lets his free hand drift to Illya’s hair, carding through it before getting a solid grip that should border on painful. He already knows that this is how Illya likes it, that this is the kind of touch that will leave him moaning deep in his throat and leaning in for more, just like he does now.

It’s over too soon, and then Napoleon finds himself raising on one elbow to watch Illya wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. He folds back to his knees, into the exact position Napoleon directed him to earlier. He looks disproportionately pleased with himself, smug and satisfied. Not long ago Napoleon had him, hook, line and sinker, coming in his underwear and trousers. He shouldn’t look so pleased.

Napoleon isn’t sure at what point he handed over control of the situation. Right now, he is not sure he had it from the start. He swallows.

‘Maybe you should just bring weapons to rendezvous. Or do I still need to ask?’ Illya says. His voice is hoarse, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

Napoleon, still humiliatingly breathless, levels him with a mild glare. ‘You think that was payment?’

‘I think that was — excuse.’

‘Excuse for whom?’

Illya smirks. Combined with his persistently flushed cheeks, eyes dark and mouth still bruised, it has the effect he must have intended it to have: Napoleon wants to drag him to bed by the collar, tie him down and wait until he is ready to beg again. But, between them, it’s Napoleon who is now very close to lying spread-eagled on the floor. It doesn’t fit into the equation that has been taking a vague shape in his mind over the past two weeks. It doesn’t fit into his picture of what this was supposed to be.

‘I have eyes, cowboy. I know you look at me. You’re not subtle.’

‘And…?’ Napoleon pushes.

‘And I wanted to see how far you would take it if I let you more than look. I knew you wouldn’t do what I want unless you thought it was your idea.’

Napoleon breathes out through his nose. He’s not certain where the surge of irrational annoyance comes from, but with Illya pinning him to the floor with nothing more than his gaze — it is not, apparently, just him who can be tied down with no restraints — Napoleon knows, with sudden and clear certainty, that his plan to see how far Illya would go, how much he really liked obeying orders, was precisely what Illya counted on him to do. Napoleon had played right into his hand.

Hook, line and sinker.

‘I hope I performed according to expectations,’ he says, fully aware that the words come out on the ungenerous side of petulant.

Illya just smiles wider. ‘Better,’ he says. He gets to his feet, perfectly coordinated, zips his trousers and doesn’t even wince at what must be a fairly uncomfortable wet spot. He shrugs into his jacket slowly enough to make it intimate, more than when it was Napoleon undressing him. The shoulder holster, gun still inside, stays on the floor. He looks relaxed, loose-limbed, practically radiating satisfaction. If Napoleon had any doubts about whether he got exactly what he wanted, what he came here for, they are long gone.

‘Tomorrow, eight o’clock sharp. Bring the guns.’

Once he’s alone in the suite again, Napoleon drops back down, wincing when his head hits the floor with a soft thunk. He covers his eyes with one arm and wonders back through the past couple of weeks. Among all the ways he envisioned it could go, the scenario where he pushed and Illya obeyed him without question, the scenario where he got off on it, this — getting conned — didn’t factor in anywhere. It should have. Oh, it should have.

‘Well played,’ Napoleon mutters into the quiet and warm Venetian night, and laughs.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [doubletalk gets through/乎弄過關](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7175225) by [notthechosenone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notthechosenone/pseuds/notthechosenone)




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